Fireside Chat with Rebecca Brenner Graham | Dear Miss Perkins
Sunday, March 2 | 5:00 PM Eastern Time | In-person and Online
In honor of Women’s History Month, join us in-person in the library or online as Fireside Chats host Paul Sparrow converses with Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham, author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany. This outstanding, inspiring new narrative of the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet, reveals the full, never-before-told story of her role in saving Jewish refugees during the Nazi regime. This event is co-sponsored by Seaside Jewish Community.
Perkins was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving labor secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these celebrated accomplishments, there is another dimension to Frances Perkins’s story. Without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition, Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. As Hitler rose to power, thousands of German-Jewish refugees and their loved ones reached out to the INS—then part of the Labor Department—applying for immigration to the United States, writing letters that began “Dear Miss Perkins…” Perkins’s early experiences working in Chicago’s famed Hull House, and as a firsthand witness to the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire, shaped her determination to advocate for immigrants and refugees. As Secretary of Labor, she wrestled with widespread antisemitism and isolationism, finding creative ways to work around quotas and restrictive immigration laws. Diligent, resilient, empathetic, yet steadfast, she persisted on behalf of the desperate when others refused to act.
Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. Previously, she taught at the American University in Washington, DC, where she also received her PhD in history and an MA in public history. She also holds a BA in history and philosophy from Mount Holyoke College. In 2023, she was awarded a Cokie Roberts Fellowship from the National Archives Foundation and a Rubenstein Center Research Fellowship from the White House Historical Association.
For more information or to register, please go to the Adult Program page of our website or contact the library by email (lewes.library@gmail.com) or by phone (302-645-2733).
